The Way of a Man eBook

“What became of your last husband, Mandy?”
I asked, willing to be amused for a time. “Did
he die?”

“Nope, didn’t die.”

“Divorced, eh?”

“Deevorced, hell! No, I tole you, I up
an’ left him.”

“Didn’t God join you in holy wedlock,
Mandy?”

“No, it was the Jestice of the Peace.”

“Ah?”

“Yep. And them ain’t holy none—­leastways
in Missouri. But say, man, look yere, it ain’t
God that marries folks, and it ain’t Jestices
of the Peace—­it’s theirselves.”

I pondered for a moment. “But your vow—­your
promise?”

“My promise? Whut’s the word of a
woman to a man? Whut’s the word of a man
to a woman? It ain’t words, man, it’s
feelin’s.”

“In sickness or in health?” I quoted.

“That’s all right, if your feelin’s
is all right. The Church is all right, too.
I ain’t got no kick. All I’m sayin’
to you is, folks marries theirselves.”

I pondered yet further. “Mandy,”
said I, “suppose you were a man, and your word
was given to a girl, and you met another girl and couldn’t
get her out of your head, or out of your heart—­you
loved the new one most and knew you always would—­what
would you do?”

But the Sphinx of womanhood may lie under linsey-woolsey
as well as silk. “Man,” said she,
rising and knocking her pipe against her bony knee,
“you talk like a fool. If my first husband
was alive, he might maybe answer that for you.”

CHAPTER XXIII

ISSUE JOINED

Later in the evening, Mandy McGovern having left me,
perhaps for the purpose of assisting her protegee
in the somewhat difficult art of drying buckskin clothing,
I was again alone on the river bank, idly watching
the men out on the bars, struggling with their teams
and box boats. Orme had crossed the river some
time earlier, and now he joined me at the edge of
our disordered camp.

“How is the patient getting along?” he
inquired. I replied, somewhat surlily, I fear,
that I was doing very well, and thenceforth intended
to ride horseback and to comport myself as though
nothing had happened.

“I am somewhat sorry to hear that,” said
he, still smiling in his own way. “I was
in hopes that you would be disposed to turn back down
the river, if Belknap would spare you an escort east.”

I looked at him in surprise. “I don’t
in the least understand why I should be going east,
when my business lies in precisely the opposite direction,”
I remarked, coolly.

“Very well, then, I will make myself plain,”
he went on, seating himself beside me. “Granted
that you will get well directly—­which is
very likely, for the equal of this Plains air for
surgery does not exist in the world—­I may
perhaps point out to you that at least your injury
might serve as an explanation—­as an excuse—­you
might put it that way—­for your going back
home. I thought perhaps that your duty lay there
as well.”